G-Tech, Panasonic and Atomos ProRes RAW workflow in FCPX

To test a host of brand new production technologies, Televisual took an actor and crew to the Cotswolds, in the UK, to start production a short film in 4K. Horror was the genre they chose, as it required a variety of challenging setups, from low lit interiors and night shoots, to bright sunshine. “Eva” was produced with the intention of pushing the boundaries of the latest hardware from G-Technology, Panasonic and Atomos combined with Apple’s new ProRes RAW codec workflow in Final Cut Pro X. Atomos now has included the option to capture the new ProRes RAW codec on the Shogun Inferno and Sumo19 SSD monitor/recorders. If making edits and mastering on Final Cut Pro X the new ProRes RAW codec avoids the need to transcode while retaining the original assets in their native format throughout the post cycle ahead of final mastering – all within iMac Pro (or a heavily specified Mac). For “Eva”, the post production of the film was on FCP X and immediately had natural, good-looking pictures ahead of up-converting the original 4K DCI RAW to ProRes 4444 (XQ) and grading on Baselight with a grade 1 reference monitor. Although FCP X’s Color toolset is perfectly fine for many projects, Televisual wanted to see just how far they could push and pull the pictures, particularly for the night shots at the end of the film. Bringing a speed that matches the film, G-Technology’s recently launched series of Pro SSDs were used to store, backup and share the film data. With Thunderbolt 3 and read/write speeds up to 2,800MB/s on location and in post, they gave the project an extremely speedy, reliable and elegant media workflow: from copying footage recorded on Atomos Master Caddy 4K SSDs right through post. The net effect was less time spent transferring and transcoding and more time spent shooting and producing, reducing the overall project timeline, delivering time and cost efficiencies. Symon Smith, director and editor of “Eva”, was impressed with the speed and capacity of the new G-Technology Pro SSDs: “The data transfer system is probably the fastest on-set system in the world. I think the read/write speeds we were seeing were close to seven minutes a terabyte. We plugged the G-Technology G-SPEED Shuttle SSD into an iMac Pro running FCP X and the 303 shots (just over 4TB) loaded up within around 15 seconds. We were immediately able to look at everything we shot and review what we had and I was editing the film within 10 minutes. We had a first cut done within one day and locked by the end of day two. G-Technology have created a way to make the job even easier.”

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